


Stand On The Line

by fourfreedoms



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Military, M/M, Marines
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-16
Updated: 2009-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-14 09:56:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/514003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fourfreedoms/pseuds/fourfreedoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean gets disillusioned with hunting, so he enlists.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Beautiful Contaminated Sky

The first thing they tell the grunts right out of basic is not to play poker with Staff Sergeant Winchester, even if he smiles at you real pretty. Every time, some hotshot cowboy does it anyway and winds up bare-ass naked the next day lying in his own vomit, unable to remember how he got there or whether there’s a single dime left to his name. 

This amuses Dean endlessly. He likes having a reputation. 

“And that’s the baddest motherfucker around, grunts,” Cpl. Max Cooperman says to the two additional bodies they’ve added to the company just out of 29palms. He smiles, focusing hard on the ignition coil in the HumVee he’s been tooling around with. He knows the poker story is coming next. Cooperman always makes him look like the long lost deity of five-card stud. 

He nods perfunctorily at the two ate up and dusty Pfcs and has to bite the inside of his cheek. He’ll wait a few days getting their measure before he bothers to learn their names. Replacements get sent home the fastest, rarely in the same shape they arrived. For now they stride heavy in their boots, shoulders thrown high because they survived Basic, but they’ll learn. Dean doesn’t ever remember feeling like that; his entire life has been a lesson in humility. 

“Back of your neck’s burning, Sergeant,” the captain points out as he passes by. “Forgot your sunscreen,” he says at Dean’s questioning look. He nods at Dean’s sir and continues walking through the camp. Dean’s been standing out here for hours, tinkering with a too-large wrench and blunt fingers. The poker warning has already come up twice. Right now it’s just standing time, blazing hot sun and fuck all to do. Times like these there's nothing better than trading tall tales about how he got so good. 

“Sergeant can’t actually read, played cards to fool everybody otherwise,” is one teasing claim, like Dean isn’t standing right there under the sun listening to it. 

“Lost his shirt so often he just decided to be the best, and the next day he was,” Cooperman says, divorced from the replacement babies. He wants Dean to teach him, but Cooperman’s face telegraphs everything. He’ll need to get Botox first. 

McCarthy, the platoon sniper, gives a face-splitting grin and says, “Fucked a pro poker player up the ass to steal his secrets.” 

Dean’s never told them he learned in the dark corners of off-track roadhouses and crummy Irish pubs while his dad shot the shit and tried to soak in as much alcohol as he could. It was just something to do while he was supposed to be minding a little brother quietly reading beat-up Hardy Boy mysteries. 

“Don’t front, fools,” he finally calls back, slamming the hood down. “I was just born genius.” 

“Shut your fucking trap, Winchester,” Cooperman says affectionately and Dean laughs. In the west the sun is starting to set brilliant orange and scarlet. He misses the pink skies of dusk back home, even though Sammy ruined it that one time by telling him it was pollutants when they were driving on 496 back stateside. A beautiful contaminated sky. 

“So, what’s the SitRep?” McCarthy asks when he turns back to them. 

Dean doesn’t know. Same old, same old. 

*

He's not sure if his father’s name got him assigned to the Seventh Marines or if the recruiting officer just saw some spark in him that Dean himself wasn’t aware of. His dad was awarded the bronze star in Lebanon. Got out just before the truck bombings in Beirut, just in time to see Sammy born. Dean remembered that when they brought Sammy home, it wasn’t just the baby that seemed new, but the father, the career soldier with the dark eyes and the gruff laugh. 

Dean was glad of the placement, proud of it. He worked hard and he didn’t look back, not even when the letters from Sam stopped coming. 

When the mail arrives there’s nothing for him. “Don’t you got a girl at home?” one of the babies asks. 

Dean shakes his head. “I don’t stick with just one.” He revels in the ensuing catcalls and loads his weapon. Dean isn’t lying. He’s never had a real girlfriend. He had a fling with a reporter, a committed relationship of sex, when he was stationed in Afghanistan. She’d liked it rough and never wanted him to take off his tags. But there’s nobody to send him candy or letters. He doesn’t mind. He always knew he was going to be standing on a line, telling the world _I’m not going to let anything get through me_. 

He steps out from under the canopy of his cammie net and walks out into the bright blaze of the morning sun, boots crunching hard on loose gravel. In the Mojave, where he’s based out of, the desert is covered by scrub and ringed by mountains—the world always just seemed to stop at those weathered peaks. Here there are miles of unbleached rock and the world seems to go on forever. Dean might’ve been made to stand on a line, but he still has it in him to question where they drew it.

They roll into a village filled with untrained men handling heavy weaponry. Dean jumps out of his HumVee to retrieve Cpl. Gage after he’s shot in the gut. A tiny piece of Dean’s ear is nicked off by stray shrapnel, and he bitches enough that the medic threatens to sedate him. Gage is gonna make it, although there’s some worry about bullet fragments being lodged close to his spine. Kid used to do hip-hop. Probably not anymore. 

*

“McCarthy's lady sent him the Band of Brothers DVDs,” Cooperman tells him one morning at 0600 when he wishes he was brushing sleep sand from his eyes rather than propping them open with toothpicks to keep awake. 

Dean yawns. “Why are you fucking jarheads so gay for that shit?” he asks as he starts breaking down their camp. Marines like to think of themselves as an invisible silent force, but you can always tell where they’ve been. Dean supposes there’s something right about that too. 

Max puts his hand over his heart and says plaintively, “Sergeant, please.” 

Dean snorts. “You want me to watch?”

“That’s what she sai—” Max starts, but Dean’s clever elbow to the gut cuts him off. 

After they get through another firefight, another grueling trek through the heat with blistered lips and sweat-damp gear, shouting at people who can’t and don’t try to understand them, somebody produces a gritty portable DVD player. The men in Dean’s team gather around with half-eaten MREs. 

After an episode Dean says, “Nix totally wants to fuck Winters’ pale Irish ass.” 

McCarthy shakes his head, run his fingers over the scrubby blond growth of his regulation haircut. “Fuck that, Sergeant, I want to fuck Winters’ pale Irish ass.” 

Reflecting on it, Dean cannot imagine being that afraid for his life. Not like the men who fought in World War II. None of them here are afraid for their lives. They’re jacked up on adrenaline, on the Metallica they pump into their helmets when they go out and level a town. Dean remembers fear. He remembers how his heart pounded when he ran from vengeful creepy ass spirits, how it felt like it would explode when he didn’t think Sam would move fast enough. 

He gets up, nods to Cooperman and strides out of the hastily erected tent into the blinding glare of the afternoon. 

*

They get a hole right through one of the radio transceivers. Nobody notices until they make camp. They don’t have spares or parts. They never do. Dean gets notice to come deal with it just as he’s taking a piss. Kelly, a soft-spoken private who could snipe a running rabbit at zero visibility comes to fetch him. He blows on his palms and wipes them on his pants, rifle slung loosely over a shoulder. 

“Alright,” he says, doing up his BDUs. 

FNGs and reservists always bitch about the lack of privacy. Any marine on their first tour has a word to say about it. But Dean was raised without personal space. When he’s back home in his tiny linoleum-floored apartment, he rattles all over the place in it. Dean turns around to Kelly’s averted eyes. He follows his gaze, but sees nothing but grass fields. It occurs to him suddenly that Kelly may have the shine. He blinks at him in surprised wonder. 

“The transceiver, sergeant,” Kelly reminds him, closing down any questions he might’ve asked. Dean lets it go. It doesn’t matter. 

Four different soldiers watch him pry the busted thing apart and start twisting wires together. They act like they aren’t fascinated, the same way Sammy did when Dean would work on the car. Sam would lie on whatever scrubby patch of lawn they could keep green and pretend to have his eyes focused on his homework. 

It crackles to life and Dean gives a proud flourish. The master sergeant, an electrical engineer who’s been with the corps since cassette tapes, shakes his head in wonder. Dean smiles. He jumps down from the HumVee and heads back to his own. Good memories, rare memories, warm him the entire way. 

*

Captain Preston’s a good officer. They call him Mother behind his back. His face never betrays anything. Other officers in the company start to show strain around their mouths as the months progress. Preston’s face is smooth, even though they all know he’s giving himself an ulcer with unshed worries. 

He’s got two kids at home. A boy and a girl. Dean met them once at 29palms. The way they’d laughed and tumbled over their daddy had stuck with him for days. Sarah, the girl, was six and had a slight dentalized lisp, but she reminded him so strongly of Sam at that age, mouthy and precocious. Dean had thought hard about calling him up. But something about the way she’d pulled her daddy’s pant leg, assured of his attention, had stopped him cold. Dean’s father would’ve taken him by the shoulder and thrust him away without a break in his conversation. 

Preston’s not meant for here. He’s meant for World War II when men were raised on hard times and the words of Patrick Henry. Give me Liberty or give me Death. Mother was built custom for that war. 

Here, there is dust and a sense of wrong. Dean left the back roads and the shady mountains filled with sprites and ghouls when things stopped standing out in such sharp relief. Black started to seem gray-edged. He’s not sure anymore about this either. None of them should be. 

*

They hook up with the Fifth Marines outside Fallujah. It’s the first time the mail has reached them in days and the 1/5 is already flush with care packages. They dump excess candy on Iraqi children whose faces have not yet taken on the strange and despairing cast of their parents. 

Cooperman’s mom sent him _The Devil’s Dictionary,_ and as they try to un-fuck stuck weapons and service broken machinery, he reads it aloud. Pfc. Archer and L Cpl. Lafleur, the babies, squint against the sun. Dean sits with them, going over tomorrow’s game plan. They call out words for Cooperman to define. Coward. Taint. Sodomize. Defenestrate. Slay. Fornicate. 

He’s been stumbling over the definition of sycophant for the last ten minutes. Kelly supplied the word with his gaze on a brown-nosing private following their CO around. “ ‘Is't not enough that thrifty millionaires who—who loot in freight and spoliate in fares blah blah blah…see you groveling their boots to lick and begging for the favor of a kick?’” Cooperman sticks out his tongue and thrusts the book aside. “Man, this one’s no fun.” 

“Spo-li-ate,” Tyler says, drawing out the syllable, “What the fuck does that mean?” 

“Rub off dead skin or whatever,” Cooperman says with an unimpressed look at his book. 

McCarthy stares at him and then starts laughing. “That’s exfoliate, you ignorant fucker.”

“Whatever, at least I’m not hard-up for a manicure or whatever,” Cooperman shoots back. Dean sticks his tongue in his cheek. They all have dirt and grease under their nails but McCarthy. 

“You can always tell a dyke if she takes care of her nails,” Dean says, pouring over the map of Fallujah he had drawn up for him. 

Cooperman cackles. “Well McCarthy, if some pussy shows up that’ll consider taking your diseased ass, you can always wave your fingers as a selling point.” 

McCarthy grins back sharply and says, “You ask your mom what she thought about my fingers.” 

“But what the fuck does spoliate mean?” Tyler repeats, breaking the conversation thread up. They all laugh. “I’m serious, Cooperman, look it up in that book.” 

Cooperman waves him away. “Nah, it’s not even gonna make any sense. He keeps writing it out like poetry or some shit.” 

“It means to pillage and plunder,” a voice says over Dean’s shoulder. 

Dean’s map falls off his lap he stands up so fast. 

Sam’s face is dusty and there are lines underneath his eyes, but he smiles ruefully at Dean. Dean’s still taken aback every time he has to look up to meet Sam’s eyes. He missed every inch Sam got over 5’8, and he still carries that image of a gangly 14-year-old in his head. 

“Sir,” Dean says and watches Sam’s expression shift. He holds Sam’s unreadable gaze for a long moment before eventually breaking it off. “How’s captain’s bars treating you?” Dean had heard about it. He should’ve made the connection last night when his platoon commander, Lt. Marchman, told him the plan was to meet up with 5th marines. 

“Not too bad,” Sam says, eyes sweeping back to his neck of the woods where some boys in the 1/5 are having a push-up contest. “Walk with me?” 

It’s not an order. Dean can say no, but his feet start walking before the rest of him catches up. Sam falls into step beside him. “How are you?” he says, eyes flicking to the nick in Dean’s ear. 

Behind him, Pfc. Archer says unquietly, “What the fuck was that?” 

McCarthy replies, “That’s his brother.” 

“But it was all loaded and shit,” Archer replies. 

“His _younger_ brother,” Tyler clarifies. 

Dean shrugs. “I’m fine.” Neither of them give any sign of having heard the exchange behind them. 

*

Sam was all betrayed when Dean enlisted. It was Clinton’s last term in office. Dean got out of school one evening—his last class was auto shop—and he drove into town and just walked right into the recruiting office. He had no idea what the world was going to look like just a few years later, but he remembered Demi Moore in _A Few Good Men_. Marines “stand upon a wall and say, ‘Nothing's going to hurt you tonight, not on my watch.’”

Sam shouted at him, “You—you joined the military because of a fucking movie? Did you even think about college?”

Dean hadn’t. College was for pussies who didn’t know what was out there. Dean did know what was out there even if it wasn’t as good and evil as he thought it was. He couldn’t just go from that to some state school with keg parties and loose cheerleaders. He was always going to be a trained killer surrounded by people who bled too easily, who hurt too quickly. At the time he couldn’t envision doing anything else. 

Four years later he got a letter from Pastor Jim. It was full of the usual prattle. Ever since Dean’s dad stopped talking to him, Pastor Jim had stepped up, trying to pretend everything was okay. He told Dean about John, about the hunts he knew of, what Sam was up to, how things were in Blue Earth. Dean treasured these letters. They were full of nothing and yet they meant the world. 

This time, buried between a paragraph on Blue Earth’s weather and a recent surge in werewolf activity was this: _Sam’s going to Annapolis in the fall. He got into half the Ivy League and Stanford, and he says he’s only going because it’s completely free, but we all know it’s so that he can be closer to you. The lord only knows why you don’t seem to have a lick of sense between the two of you._

Dean hadn’t called home in six months. He did then, not caring that it was 4 am in Colorado where his Dad and Sam were holed up. Sam had answered anyway, voice thick with sleep. 

“What the fuck, Sam!” 

That had woken him up real fast. “You don’t get to be upset, not at fucking all.” And then he hung up. 

*

“You look like you’re remembering,” Sam says as they walk past officers’ tents and carefully cheerful grunts. 

“I am,” Dean replies. 

“I heard you’re up for another commendation,” Sam says. 

“Mm,” Dean hasn’t seen Sam since his leave just after the invasion. Sam was already a midshipmen second class by then and suddenly sprung up to his full height. He’d looked strange with the military high and tight—bare. Dean had left with an odd feeling roiling in his stomach. When he stepped off the plane in Iraq, he’d felt a weird sense of relief. 

Sam graduated in 2006. He’s been leading men through the shit for two years like he didn’t once insist on holding Dean’s hand on the walk to and from school, like he hadn’t stripped his pizza of olives and hidden them in a folded up paper towel in the kitchen whenever they ordered it, like he hadn’t snuck into Dean’s bed every time he had a nightmare. 

“What are you doing here, Sam?” He says, dropping the _sir_ bullshit. He didn’t say this when Sam was at Canoe U. He didn’t say this when he first heard of Sam’s deployment. It’s probably overdue. 

Sam doesn’t try to pretend that Dean’s saying something that he isn’t. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

He looks back in the direction of camp, eyes going far-away. He needs to get back, Dean can see it in the way he levels out his shoulders. He glances back at Dean and reaches up to run gentle fingers over the shell of Dean’s ear. “Take care of yourself.” 

And then he’s walking away. He turns back when the sun makes his figure look dark against the sky and calls back, “And stop hustling your men, nobody will play poker with me.” 

Dean laughs, hand going to the breast pocket on his flak jacket. Sam bought him the beaten-up pack of cards at a dime store with a quarter he picked up off the street. 

*

They finally send Dean’s battalion home in March. After a week in his apartment, he’s ready to start breaking the plates and setting stuff on fire. It’s too empty here, and Dean has never been good at being alone. He knows what it would look like from the outside. Another fucked up vet returning home. But Dean’s not like that, when he thinks of what he’s seen in his short life, only a part of the worst of it was in Iraq. If Dean’s fucked up, it’s not war that did it to him. 

He smokes furiously while listening to Dark Side Of The Moon, stubbing cigarettes out after fifteen minutes and then lighting new ones like the flavor has run out. 

There’s a cache of illegal IDs in a metal strongbox hidden under the floorboards in his closet, five legally purchased firearms in a gun rack in that same closet, and a whole ton of weapons underneath the false bottom of his trunk that have been purchased south of the law. Dean considers it his own buyback program. Also, if the shit comes to him, as it has been known to do to retired hunters, Dean will be ready. But it also means now he has all the means to start thinking about unretiring himself. A really bad fucking idea, because the last thing he needs is to get arrested and then kicked out of the Corps because the silence got too loud in his house. 

The doorbell rings. 

*

Sam's leaned up against the balcony rail, looking at the over-chlorinated pool gunked up with leaves. Dean hasn’t ever swum in it in the entire time he’s lived here. Granted, in the entire time Dean’s lived here, he was halfway around the globe pissing in latrine trenches and eating food heated up over a Bunsen burner or a C4 fire. 

He has to struggle not to say something that sounds pissed off. Sam smiles like he can see the battle going on behind Dean’s eyes. His hair has already grown out of its regulation haircut slightly, bangs curling over his forehead. 

“It’s strange to be home,” Dean says before he can help himself. Was there any place that ever was home?

Sam doesn’t argue. “You going to invite me in?” 

Dean rolls his eyes. “Come in, Sam. You want a beer?” 

“That sounds amazing right now.” 

Somehow a beer becomes two, and then they’re cycling through the channels. Sam’s favorite movie from when he was kid, _Jumpin’ Jack Flash_ , comes on TBS. 

“We have to watch it!” Dean says, flushed with alcohol. 

“Oh no,” Sam says and shakes his head. “So not a good idea.” He takes a long sip of his beer. But they do watch it, and when the part with the shredder comes on, Sam laughs so hard he snorts beer out of his nose. Dean wishes he had a camera to capture Sam’s horrified expression. 

He shakes his head fondly. “You are so sad.” 

“Shut up,” Sam replies, congested, dabbing at his face with a napkin. 

Dean stares at him, lying on his couch, seemingly relaxed. He blinks and a thought comes to him. “We should go on a road trip.” 

“What?” Sam says, freezing. 

“Vegas, Grand Canyon, Glacier Park.” 

“Dean,” Sam says like he’s measuring every word. “We’d kill each other.” 

Dean stares hard at him. He twirls his empty beer bottle around on the table top. “You’re here.” 

Sam holds his gaze, and there’s something in it Dean can’t place. It makes him feel a little hollow inside. There used to be nothing about Sam he didn’t know. His likes and dislikes, his hard days and bad days, his first kiss, his first lay—everything and probably too much. 

“Okay,” Sam says, taking one long last pull on his beer. He looks at it like he’s trying to figure out how he got here. “Okay.” 

*

They get up the next morning around noon. Sam makes French toast that he won’t tell Dean how he learned to cook, and they hit the road after Dean’s fourth helping. Dean takes one look at Sam’s late model Toyota and says, “We’re taking my car.”

The way Dean drives they hit Vegas in the early evening. They crawl through traffic down the Strip and Sam looks fascinated, like he wants to launch an anthropological study. 

“We are not staying at Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall and Saloon,” Sam says before Dean even opens his mouth. “Or Excalibur.” 

Dean grumbles. They wind up getting a room at Mandalay Bay. Dean finds it a bit of a disappointment. The room could be in any of the motels he stayed in with Sam as a kid. The only difference is they have to keep the curtains drawn against the desert sun. 

When they head down to the casino and Dean sits down at a Craps Table, Sam gets a lost look in his eye. 

“Are you interested in seeing Cirque Du Soleil?” he asks. 

“What?” Dean says, paying more attention to the cigarette girl who’s taking his drink order than Sam at his elbow. 

“Well, I’m interested in seeing Cirque Du Soleil,” Sam says, eyes skating over the casino. 

Dean turns back to him. “So get tickets?” 

Sam takes a deep breath and says, “Yeah, I think I will.” He departs with a swift nod. Dean is left blinking after him. Sam’s acting like a recovering gambling addict and Dean has no idea why. 

Dean loses the $80 in chips he brought to the table, but he doesn’t really mind. He’s not really into gambling. He’ll bet on pool or in poker, but in those situations he knows he’s going to win, so it’s like any other controlled outcome and therefore not really gambling. 

He likes Vegas because you can do anything, see anything—if you have a kink, there’s probably an outlet just for you. And Dean’s not a very kinky guy, but he likes the notion. He came here once with a couple of guys in his platoon—O’Connor, Toretto, King, and Powell. O’Connor was put on disability in December after shrapnel had to be dug out of his knee. It’s a little odd remembering how they boisterously roamed the Strip, hopping between strip joints and vaudeville revues. And Sam wants to go to Cirque Du Soleil. He can’t quite get his head around it. 

He realizes he hasn’t seen Sam in a while. So he takes a last swig of his drink, says some charming goodbyes to the girls hanging off his chair, and sets out toward the sunshine. 

He finds Sam in the one bookstore that Caesar’s Palace has. It’s a fairly cramped Barnes & Noble, but Sam sits among the shelves reading a glossy penguin classic of Thomas Hardy’s _Return of the Native_. It hadn’t taken Dean long to find him. It’s like he has Sam lojacked. He wonders if he could put his finger to a map of the AO and find him—plot out the route of Sam’s company across the greater Fallujah area from intuition alone. A few years ago, when Sam was first deployed in Al Anbar, he might even have tried. 

“What’s up?” Sam says, not looking up from the book he’s got balanced on his knees.

Dean shifts his weight on his feet. He means to ask if Sam wants to go to a tittie bar with him, but instead he says, “Why are we here, Sam?” 

Sam sets his book aside, surprised. “You…wanted to come.” He looks defeated. 

“Not if you didn’t,” Dean says. His mouth tastes sour. He wants to know how to make it work with his brother. That’s all he’s ever wanted past primary concerns like food to eat and surviving out in the hot sun with RPGs flying past his head. 

Sam sighs. He looks like he’s debating whether or not to say something. The book is forgotten as he stands up, lying lost in the middle of the cheap B&N carpet. Sam smoothes a hand down his pant leg and says, “There were four years of Dad after you enlisted.” 

*

Sam paid off the headstone. Dean had always assumed it was Dad’s hunter buddies who’d taken care of it, because he’d never been hit up with the bill. Dean hadn’t spoken to him or Sam in months when he got the word. And it was just so coldly ironic that Dad had survived Beirut, septicemia, one heart attack, thousands of stronger faster creatures gunning for him, only to die in a car accident off I-495. Sam got the word while he was on his first Libo in Australia. Pastor Jim told Dean about it when he’d called to ask how his father could be dead. It fucking sucked. Dean wished it could’ve been different. He’d never used to wish that, but somewhere, before the moto tattoos and months spent cooped up only in the company of other men, he’d started. 

“What happened here?” Dean asks. He feels bad enough about it that Sam is able to convince him to go to one of the high-end Japanese restaurants. 

Sam’s eyes seem to blur, his gaze locked on some distant past that probably should’ve been Dean’s. “We were here in Vegas when I told Dad I was going to Navy—” A waitress interrupts them by setting down complementary bowls of Miso soup. Sam nods thanks at her, but Dean feels his face fall into ‘fuck off.’ Sam takes a perfunctory sip of his soup and then shakes his head. He keeps his eyes down on his bowl when he starts speaking again, “You have no idea how hard it was to get a congressman to nominate me. But we didn’t have any money for schools. Dad wouldn’t file for the FAFSA and I wasn’t a legally emancipated minor. We couldn’t—I just…” 

He’s silent for a long moment and then he speaks, voice lowered, hard, “What happened here, Dean? Hell happened here.” 

Dean hadn’t thought Sam leaving would’ve been any worse than Dean leaving. He’d thought maybe Dad let Sam go because nobody had said anything. He should’ve known. The miso gurgles uncomfortably in his stomach, and he pushes his bowl away. Sam raises his eyes to meet Dean’s. They seem bright, cheery, like he’s ground the few raggedy imperfections out and now everything is all right. Sam shakes his head and reaches across the table to Dean’s hand until there was only a paper’s width of space between their fingertips. “I don’t blame you,” he says. “Nobody blames you.” 

“Okay,” he says and tries to let that statement be enough. If anything he feels guiltier. He wants so desperately not to have heard any of it. 

*

They leave the next morning. Dean wakes Sam up so early he nearly has to shovel the pancakes and bacon he ordered from room service down his throat. “Jesus, I’m never going to make good on my sleep debt,” Sam says, holding a cup of coffee in a nearly limp hand. And then he straightens, shoving the exhaustion right out of his system. When he stands, going over to his duffle to grab some clothing, Dean sees the officer, not his brother. 

“I hear your men love you,” Dean says, unbidden. 

Sam scrubs a hand through his hair. The strands stick up, static. “So you _were_ keeping tabs on me,” Sam says over his shoulder. There’s something chiding in his tone. There are a lot of things Dean could say in this situation. But it’s all bullshit. Sam ended up in the same division and they both know that wasn’t God’s fortunate hand. 

Sam lets it go. He visibly subsides. “No more than your marines love Mother,” he says and heads for the shower. A sudden image of Sam as Captain Preston rushes into his head. That’s the man Sam’s going to become, two kids who are going to worry about him, PTA meetings when he’s not off leading his men through fire. Sam wants that. He wants a family—a whole, unfractured unit with no other purpose than to live, to be together, to grow old. Sam wants that so much that when Dean left for 29stumps, Sam followed and made the marines his family. But while it works for Dean, it’s not always going to work for Sam. Sooner or later Sam’s going to go off and build his own family. One of his choosing. 

The shower clicks off while Dean sits staring at his palms. The door opens and Sam steps out in a cloud of steam. His eyes snag on the alarm clock and he shakes his head. “Jesus, Dean, it is fucking early,” Sam says. He never used to swear, but that’s not something you can really keep up, surrounded by grunts who’ll jerk off with you standing just around the other side of a LAV. It doesn’t seem odd in his brother’s mouth. Dean hates being conscious of the fact that he missed so much. 

He showers quickly, scrubbing hard enough to burn. When he gets out, Sam's reading _Return of the Native_ again, but he doesn’t ever remember Sam buying it. He wonders if he stole it—unlikely—or if he went back, snuck out while Dean was asleep and bought it. Time used to be, everything Sam did woke him up. But the best officers, they knew how to tread softly, in more ways than one. 

*

The I-15 North through Valley of Fire is like a dusty scar cut through the land. Dean’s driving too fast and he doesn’t care. They listen to the old tapes he keeps in a box when it gets too difficult to track down a classic rock station. Sam doesn’t protest or fiddle with the music. He Googlemapped the entire route to the Grand Canyon, although Dean thinks after looking at the route just once he could get them there without it. 

Dean loves the open road. His favorite place to drive is Maine in the summer, because it feels so unblemished by humanity, and the world just seems to stretch and stretch and yet seem so empty at the same time. He has brief moments where he feels like that in Fallujah, when they’re not being lit up every fifteen seconds by teenagers who haven’t seen anything of the world. 

Then he ratchets the other way and he’s filled with intense hatred for the country. It’s back in the fucking dark ages. Even when the infrastructure was still in place. He wonders how the world could be allowed to get like that. He’d like to believe there was some demon fucking shit up. God, he would love to believe that. But if there’s one thing he understands now, it’s that, in some ways, hunting was a way of not taking responsibility. Hunters believe that shit is fucked up because demons exist, but it isn’t true. The metaphysical, the monsters and ghouls, they barely upset the machine. If it had, people would know, just like they’d had to come to terms with AIDS and global climate change. Ergo, what dad had been doing, what _they’d_ been doing hadn’t been that important. 

When he realized that, he left. He dropped everything and tried to make himself a new man. But it didn’t work because he couldn’t let go of Sam. Driving through Utah, Dean feels compelled to ask, “Would you have left if I hadn’t?” 

Sam looks over the top of his sunglasses at him. “I don’t know, Dean. Maybe? I hated hunting.” 

Dean chewed his lower lip and flicked off the radio. “I thought you hated Dad.” 

“It was unfair, our entire lives were unfair, and I didn’t understand why _my_ dad had to be mine. Why I couldn’t have somebody else’s?” he sighed and pushed his sunglasses back up. “But I didn’t hate him, I just wanted more than he could give.” Sam waited a beat. “I thought you hated hunting.” 

“Nah,” Dean said and forced a smile. He swallowed. Dean had adored Dad. He had thought he hung the moon. The only time he’d ever felt the kind of disappointment Sam had walked around with was when Dad said, ‘Get out!’ and meant it. “I loved the hunt, but it stopped making sense on me, and when your entire life stops making sense, you’ve got to burn it to the ground and build a new one.” 

He didn’t miss the hurt look that crossed Sam’s face. He wanted to say he’d never meant to burn that bridge. He’d done his best to stay in touch. But there was something wrong there—the way he felt about Sam, and when those feelings had come, twisting in his chest and spreading through his belly, he’d had to burn that bridge after all. Not for himself this time. It was too bad he hadn’t counted on what Sam would do. 

An 8 track of Golden Earring’s greatest hits comes on and he has to speed up when the opening chords of ‘Radar Love’ sound through the speakers. Dean looks over at the radio. “What music do you listen to?” he asks. He honestly doesn’t know. He remembers that Sam had briefly loved Blink-182 in high school. He'd gotten invited to a concert by some flat-chested brace-face, and Dean remembers his honest surprise when Sam said yes. 

Sam looks at him funny. He chews at his lower lip and then says, “A lot of Chili Peppers, Porno for Pyros, Blind Melon…” he trails off at Dean’s blank look. “The Foo Fighters?” he tries. 

_“IIIIIIIIII I’m a one way motor waaaaaaaaaaaaaay,”_ Dean yowls, drumming arrhythmically on the steering wheel. 

Sam laughs so hard tears well at the corners of his eyes. “There’s a really awesome acoustic version?” he says placatingly. Dean thinks he might be asking if he might play it later. 

“Acoustic? Ain’t none of that weak tea liberal hippie shit is playing in my baby,” Dean replies and strokes a hand down over the car’s dash. 

“Are you serious? An acoustic guitar is cause for ire?” Sam shakes his head. “Your eardrums must be all warped.” Dean smacks him on the shoulder hard enough to burn his palm, but Sam laughs and says, “Eyes on the road.”

* 

They reach the Grand Canyon just before noon. The sun blazes down so bright the skin of Dean’s arms are as white as paper in the blaze. He laughs, wind whipping through his hair. It seems so alien and at the same time everything he always expected. Dean’s been a lot of places, corners of the world where he feels like he’s right at the edge, about to fall off. He used to be afraid to fly. You don’t have any control as a passenger in a plane, can’t see what’s ahead or what’s behind. The corps beat that fear out of him. Now he’s afraid of being swallowed up. Of being forgotten. 

He has a classic car and a brother he has to review like a history test, otherwise there’s no mark of him in the world. No friends outside the Corps, no living relatives. He and Sam could both die any day and their legacy would end with them. He turns to look at Sam and finds him already looking back. 

“You’re thinking a lot,” Sam says. 

“Just look at this place,” Dean says, throwing an arm out. 

Sam grins. “I know, the last time I was here—”

“The last time you were here?” Dean interrupts, voice emotionless. 

Sam hesitates before answering, “I came before I reported for active duty, one of my friends is from Arizona—Flagstaff. We all came to visit because his family was…was something else.” 

Dean swallows. He doesn’t know why his stomach feels leaden, sunk somewhere past his knees. 

*

They stop in Bryce Canyon because it’s on the way to Glacier Park. It’d be stupid to just gun through. On the drive out to the Canyon Amphitheater, Sam points out that the spires are called hoodoos.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, it’s like an actual geological term,” Sam replies. 

They pass a couple of cheap $30 a night hotels, and settle in on a Best Western. They never got to stay in these when they were younger. Always the cheapest option with the cement pool and brackish floating leaves if there was water at all. 

After a greasy dinner in the Cowboy’s Buffet & Steak Room, Sam digs around in his duffle until he finds a pair of black trunks. “You want to come?”

Dean grins. He never had a swimsuit as a kid. They never went to the public pool after Mom died. She used to take him all the time and he would wear those air-filled water-wings and paddle around. Sam didn’t even have that. He was tossed into the water until he learned to keep himself above it. Now, watching him dive into the empty pool, Dean can see how much has changed. Sam’s strokes are powerful and fast, yet lazily graceful. He doesn’t take a breath until he’s swum the entire length and back. 

“Are you just going to stand there staring like a drill master?” Sam says, putting his feet on the bottom and pushing his wet bangs out of his eyes. By now his hair has grown out long enough that nobody would ever know he regularly buzzed it off. Dean jumps in beside him, sending a wave of water up and over Sam. 

When he surfaces, Sam shoves him. “Thanks, asshole,” he says with a muted smile. “I think this pool is like ten yards long.” 

“What are you thinking?” Dean asks. He loves the feeling where he hasn’t quite adjusted to the temperature, and it still feels mildly cold. He takes a moment to revel in it. 

“I’m thinking 200 free, 100 fly, and 50 back,” Sam replies, rotating his shoulders. Dean can hear his officer voice around the corners and it sounds right in his mouth. He thinks maybe he should chafe at it, his baby brother telling him how it’s going to be. But it’s sensible. 

“35 laps? You’re buying me a beer if I finish first,” he says and pushes off from the wall, ducking his head under the water. Neither of them brought goggles, it seems stupid now when he has to keep his eyes closed from the burn of chlorine. He’s faster than Sam at freestyle, enough that in the 13th lap he actually laps him, but Sam is phenomenal at the butterfly which has always been Dean’s worst stroke and he slams through those ten laps like the water’s not even there to form resistance. 

He hasn’t worked out since they left. There was a gym in the hotel in Vegas, but Dean despises the treadmill. He’d gone running every morning when he first got back—by force of habit, but also to quiet the ringing in his head. He’d found he couldn’t sleep at night if he didn’t exhaust himself. In some ways, being with Sam all the time is taking care of that. He holds his breath for two stretches, trying to push the thought out of his mind. When he finally turns his head to suck in air, it feels like the most important thing that’s happened to him. 

They pull up at the edge seconds apart, breathing hard. Dean says, “Passing the swim qualifications at Basic was one of the hardest things I ever did.” 

“Yeah, dad prepared us pretty good for everything else, but swimming…” Sam trails off and hauls himself up out of the pool in one heave. His trunks cling. The weight of the water has dragged them low on his hips and Dean can clearly see the dimples in his spine. He drops his eyes. 

“Do you ever wonder if he was proud?” Dean asks, nearly wanting to cut his own tongue out the minute the words are out of his mouth. 

Sam turns to stare at him. His skin takes on a slightly metallic sheen in the shifting atmospheric lighting and Dean finds it mesmerizing. Sam says slowly, “Of course he was proud. You told him to go fuck himself. Dad said fuck you to everybody his whole life, you don’t think he understood that?” Dean huffs out a breath and Sam frowns. “I know understanding is not the same as agreement, but he got you, Dean, more than he ever got me.” 

The air is fraught. Dean’s breath seems to echo off damp tile. He shakes his head and hears water slosh inside his ears. “He didn’t love me more than you, Sam,” Dean tells him. It’s the same voice he used when Sam was afraid of the dark, when he felt like the kids at school would never like him, when he thought he could never do good enough in school. 

But Sam can never let things be easy, even when it should be. “Don’t lie to me,” he says, picking up the criminally tiny towel the hotel offers for free. He towels his hair to end the conversation and when the strands fall spiky and disarrayed over his forehead he says. “You want that drink?”


	2. They Call It Mortaritaville

Sam asks Dean about his shoulder piece with his fingers curled around the neck of a Heineken, relaxed and loose like he rarely sees him. Dean blinks at him and then realizes they’ve never talked about it. Sometimes he carried Sam around in his head so much he forgot that he wasn’t actually there, that Sam hadn’t seen Dean drunkenly tumble himself into a tattoo parlor with his buddies after completing his MOS. Sam’d been chopping corners and drilling at Navy. 

“Ah, Jesus,” Dean says and scrubs at his face, embarrassed. 

“I would’ve expected a huge Led Zep tribute, but this seems way more…” Sam pauses, searching for the right words. 

“Personal?” Dean finishes, grinning, perfectly aware that what Sam was going to say wouldn't have been exactly flattering. 

“Sure,” Sam says, mouth fighting a smile. He slides the sleeve of Dean’s shirt up, revealing the edges of the ink. Dean shrugs and the fabric slides back further showing almost the entire tattoo. It was designed to look like his flesh had ended, torn away, revealing inked-on armor underneath. “Whose idea was it?” 

“The artist,” Dean says and takes a drink. “I said I wanted armor tattooed on, and he called me a drunken idiot, and when I woke up the next morning with a pounding head, it looked like this.” 

“Hey, don’t get me wrong it’s pretty tight,” Sam replies, eyes crinkling at the corners fondly. His thumb smoothes over the Celtic knot-work decorating the tattooed rendition of a spaulder. Dean shivers. Heat flares up in his face like he’s had too many drinks and he sucks down the last dregs of his beer and then tilts the bottle looking for more as a distraction. He might be making this more uncomfortable than it has to be. “You want another?” 

Sam shrugs. Dean goes to the bar to put some space between them. Sam’s delicate off-hand touch is still causing his synapses to fire. It’s crowded, so he idles for a short while waiting for the overworked bartender to notice his twenty dollars. He has to drive them back, so he refrains from asking for an empowering shot of whiskey. 

When he returns with the second round, Sam isn’t alone. A tall blonde girl with tan skin and an easy smile sits straddling the back of the empty chair at their table. She laughs and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. She’s pretty, right on his radar, but he hadn’t even noticed her until she moved in on Sam.

“I’m Jess,” she says when he sits back down, offering him a flirtatious grin. 

He nods. “Dean.” 

She smiles again and then turns back to Sam. “Yeah, so I’m road tripping with my friends,” she says, “celebrating graduation.” 

“Oh, from college?” Sam asks perfunctorily, rotating his empty bottle on the table. 

“No, I just finished up my masters,” she grins and shrugs, “Hope I can get a job now. But what about you guys?” 

Sam and Dean trade glances before Dean answers, “We’re in the marines.” 

She leans back, surprised. “Like, you’ve been to Iraq?”

Sam nods, eyes on the table. Dean shoves his full pint at him and Sam smiles before taking a swallow. “Just got back,” he says. 

She cocks her head. Dean thinks she’s probably never come across somebody in the military who wasn’t a bitter ‘nam vet or part of that greatest generation that fought and bled all the way through France into Germany. They are so far from that, and she will probably never understand. She asks, “Are you out now?” 

“We’re career,” Sam replies, eyes on Dean. Dean hides a smile and Sam ducks his head. Somehow she senses she’s intruding and with one last million dollar smile, she gets up and says goodnight. 

“Congratulations on your masters,” Sam says and raises his glass to her. 

She turns around, a strange almost sad look on her face and nods. “Thanks.” Sam never looks back at her. Dean wonders if he’s just missed something important, if he should tell him to go after her. He doesn’t. 

*

Sam loves Glacier Park. He’s awestruck by it. They pull off at the first vista point and he’s out of the car, staring around him in wonder like the sky’s turned a beautiful unexpected shade of green. Dean finds the wondering childlike expression on his face more interesting. The sky is studded with a few creamy clouds and the entire world feels like it’s been washed and scrubbed, suds left behind. Even the air seems polished. He breathes deep. 

“What do you think?” Sam says, turning around, his arms spread wide. A pocket-sized digital camera dangles at the end of one hand. He’s taken about fifty pictures with it and he snaps one of Dean with his mouth open to answer the question. 

“Thanks, asshole.” 

“Love you, sweetheart,” Sam replies with a laugh. He turns around and snaps another shot, the camera held at arms’ length as he lines it up in the viewfinder. Dean thinks back on the days when cameras were black heavy things or yellow Kodak disposables. Guys had still carried those on his first overseas deployment, hoping the film wouldn’t degrade in the hot sun and sand in Afghanistan. Dean smiles and shakes his head. 

“You know, you said we were going to kill each other,” Dean points out to Sam. He doesn’t know why he brings it up. They don’t need to talk about these things. It seems too loaded. He expects Sam to shoot him that look, the ‘c’mon, man’ face. The one he’d given Dean every time he tried to assure Sam they’d be staying in a school district, or had enough money enough for Sam’s textbooks, or that Dean’s leaving for basic wasn’t going to change anything. 

But he doesn’t, in this strange new place it flies right past Sam. He hops up onto a rock like it’ll make him tall enough to touch the soapy sky and says simply, “I know. That’s what I thought.” When he looks back at Dean, a strangely inscrutable expression on his face, Dean drops his eyes and thinks about how he’d like to eat some cotton candy. He hasn’t had any since he was seventeen. 

*

They are so close to British Columbia they could touch it, just keep on going until they make it, but Sam says he’s ready to head home. He’s itching for something. Dean doesn’t know what. They were never like other kids who needed their own beds or stuffed animals or any sense of regularity to sleep. They wouldn’t have survived if they’d needed that. But Dean knows something’s up. He just doesn’t know how to ask. 

Without meaning to, they run into a hunt in Kalispell, the night after they checked into the motel. They’re driving out on a two-lane road to get some breakfast and then head on to the next town, but they never get that far. It's so accidental as to be embarrassing. They hadn’t heard anything about the seventeen deaths or read about strange occurrences. Dean had had to actively break himself of the habit of scanning the papers the first couple of years at 29palms. For the second time in their lives, something supernatural just chooses them. 

The parking lot of the diner opens out into the woods, and they leave after pancakes and bacon. Dean turns around to make a joke about the couple that was fighting in the booth next to them. Something on Sam’s face, the subtle shifting of the skin around his eyes before it can even reach an expression of horror, tells him to duck. A large animal whirrs by overhead, slamming into a tree trunk. Dean rolls, ready to get to his feet, but he only makes it to his knees before a heavy clawed hand rakes over his shoulder, digging deep into the skin. Over the sudden bright rush of pain running up and down his arm, he thinks about how shredded his leather jacket’s going to be. And then there’s a sensation of weightlessness. 

Sam shouts his name. Dean can’t see him, everything is moving too fast, and then he’s thudding to the ground again with a horrible sickening thud. He thinks he must have at least two ribs broken. But he doesn’t have time to worry about that. Already he’s trying to put damage out of his head, assess the situation, reach for his weapon. But there isn’t one. He can’t quite pick himself up, but he rolls his head back on his neck, eyeing the huge creature behind him. It crouches, watching him, waiting to pounce. It growls, and Dean has the sudden realization that it’s toying with him. 

He stares back at it, can’t believe this is how he’s going to go. Just like Dad. The last way he thought he’d die. When Sam crashes through the bushes, firing rock salt at the creature, Dean’s heart starts beating again. The creature backs up but doesn’t back off. 

“He’s not a believer!” Sam shouts. 

Dean uses a fallen log to get himself to his feet and he yells hoarsely, “What the fuck, Sam?” 

“It’s a matagot!” Sam calls back, one of Dean’s sawed-off shotguns trained on the creature. He darts a glance at Dean, and then looks back at the creature, more of an abnormally large black cat. “Tell it you don’t believe in God.” 

“I don’t…I don’t believe in God,” Dean says. He doesn’t how that can possibly help. His hand goes unwillingly to amulet around his neck, and it draws the cat’s attention. 

“May he strike you down,” the cat replies sarcastically, rolling out of its crouch, yellow eyes luminous in the shade. Dean stares at it, shocked, finally daring to breathe. He slumps back against the log, unable to hold himself up any longer, and clutches his arm to his chest. He can feel blood running down over his fingers, but other than the open wounds where it burns, the arm is numb to the shoulder. 

The cat licks one paw and says to Sam in an ungendered voice, “You can’t kill me. You know the rules.”

“Kill you?” Sam replies, smiling grimly. “Vade retro me, motherfucker.” 

The cat yowls suddenly and starts charging them. “Sam,” Dean yells, trying to lurch forward in front of him. 

“Ab insidiis diaboli,” Sam yells and shoots the cat who goes flying back, and then he reloads, continuing to shout, “libera nos, Domine.” The cat shakes its head, dazed and then rolls to its feet, trying to lunge at them. Sam puts bullet after bullet in it, firing every time it struggles towards them. “Ut Ecclesiam tuam secura tibi facias libertate servire, te rogamus, audi nos.”

The cat screams and then crumples, going up in a gout of smoke. Sam breathes hard. From relief, Dean realizes, he didn’t know it was going to work. The edges of his vision are starting to darken, and he spares a thought that at least he waited ‘til it was safe to pass out. “Demons,” he slurs, “have we ever come across demons?” And then he’s falling to the ground. 

*

Dean doesn’t know how Sam gets him back to the car. He comes to as Sam drags him into the passenger’s side, but the entire world is spinning, and time keeps blinking out. 

“No hospitals, Sammy, no hospitals,” he says, holding his shoulder. It hurts to breathe and his vision turns purple at the edges. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you? We are not like Dad, we have to go to a hospital!” 

“I ca—c—” he stumbles over the words and then gives up all together. “Venom—on the claws.” 

His last thought is remembering Balad—the helicopters descending in droves, and how it was far too much like MASH for comfort and then he’s sinking back into the darkness. 

He resurfaces to Sam pouring some concoction down his throat and dousing his arm in Johnny Walker Red Label. There’s pain and hallucination. He’s back wandering the halls at Balad, the horrible fever dream about the reaper. The doctors talk above his bed in muted whispers. But he still hears one say, “The brain damage is irreversible, doctor, this one will never breathe again off a life support system.” 

“Real shame, got it pulling some civilian out of a house that got schwacked.” 

Dean wants to scream, but he can’t move. He can’t do anything. 

A grinning army ranger with the bandage over half his burned face stands in the room and says, “They call it mortaritaville, you know?” He snorts, mouth pulling in away his facial muscles shouldn’t allow. “Clever!”

“No!” Dean screams, thrashing. “I left!”

He’s in the stairwell in hospital issue clothes, begging to live again. “You don’t understand, Tess,” he says. 

“Of course I do,” she replies. “You think you’re the first not ready to go?”

“I never got to see him again,” he says weakly, vertigo dropping his stomach through the floor. The halls seem to extend infinitely. He will never get out of this place. She told him he wasn’t supposed to leave and the doctors said he couldn’t ever hope to. 

And somehow, somehow he woke up fine, with only a shallow cut on his forehead, because it was all a dream. But maybe he’d never really woken up. Maybe coming home, seeing Sam under the hard desert sun was the lie. Now, the grinning wounded soldier and the doctors have come to take him back to Tess. How could she give him this gift and then take it away again?

Sam appears above him. “Dean, I need you to be here with me.” 

“She says I have to go,” Dean replies. 

Sam grips his shoulder. “Well, she’s lying.” 

The motel snaps back into focus like a rubber band, ceiling and walls slamming firmly into their proper places again. It makes him want to vomit. He moans weakly and curls away from Sam’s touch. The darkness takes him again. 

*

He wakes just after eight pm, feeling woozy and drunk, but even though the room is spinning, it makes sense. Sam sits at the table by the window looking haggard, surfing the internet and crumpling and unraveling a napkin periodically. 

“How bad was it?” Dean asks gruffly, eying his bandaged arm. 

“The venom was hallucinogenic,” Sam explains, “The matagot likes to play with its victims before killing them.” 

“Why are none of these fuckers straight up?” Dean replies, shifting his head on the pillow. The entire bed seems to move under him. He groans. 

“So I didn’t know you were taken to Balad,” Sam says after a long pause. He’s looking at Dean over his laptop screen, face purposefully expressionless. 

Dean swallows. “My platoon was in Al Qaim, there was a little girl with a broken leg _screaming_ inside this hut while we were taking fire.” He looks up at the ceiling and tries not to picture her mutilated left leg in his head. “I pulled her out just as the building next door was hit with a mortar. One half of the structure collapsed and shrapnel exploded everywhere. I only sustained superficial wounds, but I was knocked out and my forehead was bleeding pretty bad. They had me cas-evaced to Camp Anaconda.” 

He pauses and Sam hands him a glass of water, watching him drink it like a mother hen. Dean nods his thanks and then says, “I had this dream while I was there that I was brain dead or locked in or something, and this reaper—you know like the ones Dad used to talk about—was telling me it was time to leave. God, it was a nightmare.” 

“Sounds like,” Sam replies. 

“But when I woke up, I was fine. They just stitched up my forehead and a few days later I was with my platoon again." He shrugs. "The little girl died.” 

“Nothing you could’ve done,” Sam says softly in the officer voice. When Dean looks up at him, Sam’s eyes are far-away, like he’s remembering his own personal failures back in theater. Sam stands up purposefully, brushing off his pant legs. “Well, Bobby says I should get you some food if you feel up to it. You threw up your entire breakfast.” 

“Not in the car?” Dean asks, horrified, pushing himself up to his elbows. 

Sam laughs. “Not in the car.” 

*

While Sam is gone picking up takeout, the pain in his arm returns a hundred fold. He doesn’t carry anything stronger than Aleve with him anymore. He’s got the achy feel that comes from fevers and sunburns accompanied with an unbearable wrenching dagger of pain in the meat of his arm. He eyes the half-full bottle of Johnny Walker that they’d bought when they meant to have a good time, and has to purposefully look away.

He hates himself. He really does. Thinking about Balad always brings back the self-loathing. He doesn’t remember despising himself before the dreams about Tess. But he knows he must have. There were a billion and one things to be guilty of. Almost all of them were about Sam. He fucked up. He fucked up so hard. He doesn’t even know where it started. But it was there when he was gone. First few weeks of Basic, too tired even to jerk off, and he’d dreamed of Sam’s coltish legs bracketing his hips. His fingertips on Dean’s skin, sliding up over the ridges of newly cemented muscle. Basic hadn’t been the hell on him in the way it had been on the other recruits, but it wasn’t a piece of cake, and the entire way the only thing he wanted, more than rest, more than respite, more than a good beer, was to feel Sam’s weight pressing him down into his tiny rickety-springed bed. 

He hadn’t gone home on leave, not because Dad had told him not to come back. That would never have stopped him. But he couldn’t see Sam. He’d gone to Bobby’s and worked odd-jobs in the yard, picking up girls in the evening, and generally trying not to miss what he never realized he was going to lose when he left. 

And when Sam had found out Dean was at the junkyard and he recieved the next in a long line of betrayed phone-calls, Dean hadn’t said, “I’ll try and find a way to spend a day with you the next time you’re in this neck of the woods.” He’d just apologized and left it at that. Because Sam never had to know that his brother had fucked up. That he’d gone and got his entire sense of family responsibility and love all twisted up into something that didn’t even make sense. And somehow, he just accepted that about himself. But the loathing, he’s pretty sure that started with the reaper dream. He guesses he’ll never be sure something wasn’t going on there. 

He thought whatever that feeling for Sam was, the one he’d nurtured inside himself even as he refused to go home, had been scoured out of him in the wake of that self-loathing. Now it seems, he gets to bear the weight of both. 

By the time Sam comes back with a bag full of sesame chicken and beef lo mein, he’s lost the battle. He’s just drunk enough that the room spins around him and his head is lolling on his shoulders. It didn’t take much on an empty stomach. His shoulder still fucking hurts. Useless. Sam takes one look at him and says, “You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” He sits down on the other bed, leaving the food forgotten next to his laptop. He puts his head in his hands. “Why would you do that?”

Dean laughs, tries to resettle comfortably on the bed. “Didn’t like the inside of my head, didn’t like my arm.” He laughs again. “Hurts.” 

“Jesus,” Sam replies. There’s a sigh in his voice. “I would’ve gotten you something, idiot.” 

Dean blinks at him, his eyes are tracking too slow. “Needed it now.” 

Something about that amuses Sam. He gets up and pulls a carton and chopsticks out of the brown bag. It’s like he’s given up on getting mad when Dean goes off and disappoints him. 

“Never meant to hurt you?” It comes out like a question. Did he mean that? Maybe that way he thought he could keep the fucked up from spreading. Maybe he did mean to hurt Sam, but he never had the guts to come right out and yank the band-aid off. He could’ve said I don’t want you around. 

Sam stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “What the fuck?” he says, holding Dean’s lo mein. 

“When I didn’t—didn’t come back to see you as much as I could…have.” He stumbles with the words. It would be nice if he could talk in pictures. Just show Sam the stuff rolling around in his head. It’s far too difficult to articulate it. 

“Okay. Don’t make a mess of yourself.” Sam plunks the carton of food next to his head and retreats to his bed with his own food. He’s pissed off, stabbing his chopsticks into his rice like he’s trying to kill it. 

“You’re upset,” Dean slurs out. He tries to struggle out from under the tangle of covers, but they always wedge these sheets so tight under the mattress it’s like he’s been nailed down. He gives up and stares at the box of Chinese food on the dresser. 

Sam makes a horrible bitter noise in the back of his throat. “You nearly died. Dear fucking christ, why would you be so stupid?” 

There’s a headache building up between his eyes. “I couldn’t go back and see you…”

“We’re not having the same conversation here,” Sam says slowly. He’s tired with rings under his eyes and a grey pallor to his skin, but he still looks so fiercely beautiful. “It’s water under the bridge, Dean.” 

“I—I gotta say this,” Dean replies, even though it’s so hard to talk. “I thought if I went back, I might ask you for some—something that I never should.” 

He doesn’t hear Sam’s reply or even register the look on his face, because he’s sucked back down under. 

*

He wakes up the next morning feeling like his brain is pulsing inside the confines of his head. When he blinks the grit out of his eyes, he finds Sam picking at leftover rice and talking on the phone. After a moment, he makes eye-contact with Dean and then looks away again before Dean can mouth an apology. He feels like a really big idiot. A hungover, pained idiot. His arm is screaming at him and he really wants a shower. 

Sam smiles into the phone and he talks in this laidback relaxed voice which instantly clues Dean in that it’s not Bobby or Pastor Jim. You don’t talk like that with someone so much older than you, he figures. You talk like that with a buddy. He rolls himself out of bed just as Sam is hanging up. 

“Who was that?” he asks, brushing crud out of his eyes and lurching for the large bottle of Poland Springs water Sam probably bought just for this moment. 

“My roommate,” Sam replies, stretching his arms up above his head. “He just got back from his hitch in Hawaii and he’s wondering why I’m not in the apartment.” 

Dean doesn’t remember much of last night other than the desperation that drove him to the bottle in the first place, but now he’s decided he’s not going to say anything. Sam doesn’t look mad, he brought him the water, and he wasn’t banging around the room at all hours in passive aggressive retaliation. When Dean looks at the clock, he realizes it’s nearly noon.

His stomach growls. 

Sam shakes his bangs out of his eyes and says, “Take a shower, and we’ll hit the road. There’s a Jamba Juice here, miracle of all miracles, we can grab something to eat there.” 

Dean pulls a face. “You’re fucking with me.” 

Sam raises both his eyebrows and leans back in his chair. So maybe Sam’s a little pissed. 

*

Dean got a White Gummy and felt slightly mollified even though Sam gets into the car on the driver’s side. The smoothie really does taste like gummy bear, so he’ll let Sam drive without fussing. He supposes he owes him that much. Sam also bought a soft pretzel and he keeps tearing pieces off and handing them over like Dean's five. Dean takes about five Aleve in a single swallow and rotates his arm into the position it’ll hurt the least in. He’s not going to enjoy getting back to the Stumps and explaining why his arm looks like he put it through the shredder. Mother's disapproving face is almost as frightening as Sam's.

Sam drives faster than Dean remembers. The thought occurs to him as they merge onto the highway that he’s in a hurry to get back. He swallows the sudden lump of unblended fruit that shoots up the straw and coughs. It all went wrong. He realizes they skipped all of the important questions. He thought Sam was just as unmoored as he was. But fond calls from a roommate—clearly not. He clears his throat and says, “Are you seeing anyone?” 

Sam blinks away from the road briefly to stare at him. “Nope,” he says finally. Dean sighs and busies himself looking for a new tape to put in. Well, it’s awkward now. He bets Sam has run through all the reasons he never wanted to come to begin with. This hopeless feeling is starting to overwhelm him. He makes a lot of noise rummaging through the box, but Sam doesn’t react, doesn't even dart his eyes over to look at what Dean's doing. 

Dean discards a cassette of sixties hits like The Zombies, The Hollies, The Amboy Dukes, and a few other bands that some free love and flower power obsessed chick made him in high school. It's a mystery how he's managed to hang on to it between all their time spent on the road and him packing up his bags forever. Funny how he keeps picking up the detritus of a former life in all the most unexpected places. The Allman Brothers’ Idlewild South goes next, and then Iggy Pop’s Sister Midnight. 

After much unsettled shuffling through the box, he unearths a Jimmy Cliff tape he didn’t even know he had. The first time he can distinctly remember listening to it was when he was four, sitting in the Impala with his feet propped up on the dash--Dad finally agreeing to let Dean sit next to him when they ran errands for Mom. He pops it in and turns up the volume. 

Sam darts a glance at him, surprised when the first few bars of ‘The Harder They Come’ plays. “Man, I don’t think I’ve heard this song in ten years.” 

“Me neither.” Dean grins and sings, “‘The officers are trying to keep me down/Trying to drive me underground/And they think that they have got the battle won/I say forgive them Lord, they know not what they've done.’” Sam rolls his eyes and Dean reaches across the gearshift to punch him in the shoulder. “Those damn officers, what do they teach you in OCS?” 

“I didn’t go to OCS, fucker,” Sam replies, but he’s laughing. 

“You Annapolis boys always get so touchy,” Dean replies, settling back in his seat. 

“Dude, OCS is 12 freakin’ weeks long. I busted my ass for four years.” 

“And that’s why you’re not as fucked in the head as other officers, that and I raised you right too,” Dean says fondly. He leans his head up against the glass of the window. “So tell me about the roommate.”

“Hmm?” Sam says, “Oh, Reese. Not much to tell. He’s a warrant officer with the 2/1. He got back from his deployment in Okinawa in January, but I haven’t seen him since I got back.” He shoots Dean a pointed look and then shrugs. “We met at Pendleton. He’s a cool guy—you would like him.”

“Oh yeah?” Dean replies, skeptic.

Sam looks over at him again and smiles. “Yeah, you would. His favorite pastimes are horror movies and chasing skirts.”

Whatever Dean may say to Sam, he’s not like some of the guys in his platoon who think that all officers suck dick and are going to get them killed. Mother is possibly the best human being he knows, and certainly one of the most competent. But Dean really fucking doubts he’s going to like whatever retard lieutenant Sam is sharing house with up with in Oceanside. 

*

They hit Salt Lake City just before 10 PM. They stop at a Pizza Hut and pick up a Meat Lovers for Dean and a Supreme for Sam. There’s some deal where they get a free 2 liter with their pizzas and Dean even feels generous enough to pick Sprite instead of Coke, because Sam hates Coke. 

The motel is a little too warm and it’s familiar, comforting somehow. It amuses him to watch Sam peel off layer after layer. He feels pretty exhausted after stuffing himself, so he brushes his teeth and shrugs out of his clothes while Sam watches a rerun of CSI. He’s peering at his bandaged arm in puzzlement when Sam looks over and says, “You need a hand?” 

He sits Dean down on the bed and unwinds the bandage around his bicep slowly. It sticks in the wound and Dean hisses when Sam pulls it out with an even tug. 

“Sorry,” Sam says and holds up a bottle of iodine. “This is going to hurt.” Like Dean doesn’t know, still the sting brings tears to his eyes. Sam swabs the excess away and Dean carefully watches his face, the way his eyelashes flutter, the velvety-looking quality of his skin, how pink the curve of his lips are. Sam tapes the gauze down with his tongue poking out between his teeth. Dean drops his gaze to his lap and he doesn’t look up until Sam grips the uninjured part of his bare shoulder reassuringly. 

“It’s healing up fine,” he says, hand still on Dean’s shoulder. Dean meets his eyes and swallows. Sam’s fingers dig in, pressing deep into a knot. He shifts and holds back a groan, the pleasure pain running warm all the way down his spine. Dean’s nose is level with Sam’s navel and it takes more willpower than he knew he had to keep from dropping his eyes lower. 

Sam says, “Last night you said you couldn’t keep from asking…couldn’t keep from asking what?”

“Sam,” Dean replies warningly, turning his head away. 

“I’m serious,” Sam says. His long fingers are still rubbing at Dean's shoulder and he draws them back down over the wing of Dean’s scapula. “Couldn’t keep from asking if you could…touch me?” Sam says and his voice is hoarse. Dean squeezes his eyes shut, horrified that heat is pooling in his shoulder and along his nerves so that he feels it everywhere. “If you could kiss me? If you could fuck me?” 

“It wasn’t like that,” Dean says, trying to shrug out from under Sam’s touch. 

Sam makes a noise in the back of his throat, and Dean can’t bear to look up at his face. “Why not?” Sam asks. “What if I wanted it to be like that?” 

He slides his fingers around Dean’s throat, thumb rubbing over Dean’s Adam’s apple. His hand is so big it easily seems to span it. Sam can probably feel how hard his heart is pounding. Dean reaches up and tugs it away, pressing a quick kiss to Sam’s palm. “You don’t mean it.” 

Sam pushes him back on the bed, settling over him gingerly, careful of Dean’s injured arm. “How would you know? You never came home.” 

He connects their mouths, hand tilting Dean’s chin up just the way he wants it. Dean still has one foot on the floor and Sam’s completely clothed while he’s just in boxers. There should be a million ways it’s awkward even beyond their shared DNA, but something about it simply works. Sam sucks at his lower lip assiduously until it’s swollen and over-sensitized. Dean has to pull back and nip at the corner of Sam’s mouth to distract him. When Dean brings his other leg up on the bed to bracket Sam’s hips he moans in a way that makes Dean smile. 

Dean got hard from the first touch of the tip of Sam’s tongue to his and he can feel Sam’s own erection against his thigh, but they don’t do anything about it. Sam kisses and kisses him like a fourteen-year-old who doesn’t expect anything more than this. Like making out and little shivery touches designed to make Dean breathe harder are the end game. 

Dean tangles his hands into Sam’s hair and feels completely drunk and just as out of control as he felt last night. He rolls them over to gain some of his equilibrium, take charge of the moment, but Sam runs one large hand down the dent in his spine, and he loses his place. The room is altogether too warm and he feels like he doesn’t have full control of his muscles. 

He pushes himself up and stares down at Sam, whose cheeks have flared up in a flush. Sam eyelids flutter and there’s the slightest hint of a smile about his lips. He cranes his neck up and brushes their lips together again. Then he says, “You should’ve come home, idiot.” 

Arousal simmers in the pit of Dean’s stomach, but he just drops his head and chuckles bitterly. Sam falls asleep, sprawled out under him. Dean doesn’t move because he’s too afraid this perfect image is going to shatter. 

*

The next morning Sam wakes him up with two Boston crèmes and a coffee Coolata from Dunkin Donuts, just the way he likes it. Dean gets the filling everywhere and is internally amazed when he licks his fingers off and Sam watches him with undisguised hunger. He blinks at his brother and Sam turns away again to gulp at his black coffee and read the paper. 

The air simmers between them. When they hit Nevada, they pull off at a rest stop just out of Mesquite to switch drivers. Sam stretches as he gets out of the car, closing his eyes as his back cracks. He winks when he catches Dean watching and buys him a Coke slushy while he waits for the gas to finish pumping. He gets a cherry one for himself that turns his mouth violently red. Flirting--they're flirting. The mere thought is astonishing. 

“So much sugar,” Sam says, voice hoarse, as Dean merges back into traffic. 

“What are you talking about?” Dean says, scandalized, balancing his slushy between his thighs. 

“I like, basically haven’t eaten sweets except on special occasions since my plebe year.”

“That’s atrocious!” Dean replies. “Every day is a special occasion.” 

“You would say that,” Sam replies, cranking his seat back and popping his sunglasses on his face. He falls asleep to Dean drumming along the steering wheel while the Doors play. Dean can actually glance right over and see the line of Sam’s dick against his thigh through his jeans. The real surprise is knowing he doesn't have to feel bad about it. He snorts at himself and guns the engine up to 90. 

It’s another four hours on the 15 before they’re back to Dean’s place. He likes the silence in his head. He realizes that it’s been quiet since last night. Sam doesn’t stay asleep the whole way. He wakes up when Dean swears at a guy in a Porche who swerves into his lane without checking the blind spot. 

Sam stretches and rolls his shoulders. Dean knows he’s probably tight as a wire. Sam looks down at his watch and then at the speedometer. “I swear there’s no need to break the sound barrier.” 

Dean grins. “And yet, I’ve never had a speeding ticket.” He pets the dashboard lovingly while Sam rolls his eyes. 

“CHP is seriously remiss in their duties.” 

It’s not like a speeding ticket would stop him. If Dean spoke German, he’d totally move there just so that he could drive on the Autobahn. “Whatever, you parsimonious monk.” 

Sam laughs at him. “Hoo, pulling out the SAT words.” 

They lapse into silence for several miles and then Dean looks over at Sam. He breathes out and asks, “Can I ask you something?” 

Sam widens his eyes. “Sure.” 

“When did you know?” he asks with his eyes firmly on the road ahead of him. In the end he can’t help glancing back quickly at Sam. 

“Mmm.” Sam leans back in his seat, his eyes unreadable behind the mirrored lenses of his sunglasses. “In the 8th grade? I had a dream about DPing that girl you were seeing, Cat Garland.” 

“Seriously?” 

“Yeah, it was fucked up,” Sam replies with a laugh. 

Dean remembers Cat. She wore tiny, tiny denim shorts with combat boots and heavy flannel shirts that probably belonged to her dad or her older brother. She liked to play the feminist card, but Dean bets he could’ve gotten her to do it. He’d had her wrapped around his finger in a way that makes him kind of ashamed now. He hasn’t thought about her in a long time. 

“Do you still…want something like that now?” Dean asks. 

“Threesomes?” Sam laughs again. He rolls his head on his neck like he’s stretching the muscles. “No. I’ve never done it, and I can’t say I want to.” 

“More trouble than they’re worth,” Dean agrees. “It’s easier with two girls than it is with two guys. Women are right, men are fucking selfish.” 

Sam bites his lip. “I’m not sure I want to know.” There’s an unfamiliar expression on his face. 

Dean smirks. “Yeah, you do.” 

*

When they get back to the tiny-little second story linoleum apartment, the sky has gone dusky purple. They leave everything in the car. Dean runs laughing up the steps while Sam chases him. He knows when he forces the door open, keys nearly refusing to come out of the lock again that Sam would’ve pinned him up against that door and fucked Dean’s mouth with his tongue for all the world to see. 

Only everybody here has some cousin or brother or friend in the service. There are about a million things wrong with this according to the Uniform Code. Sam’s a guy and an officer, and while the Uniform Code has nothing to say on siblings, the state of California picks up the slack. With the door closed and the curtains drawn across the windows Dean doesn’t care. That stuff doesn’t matter. 

They fight to get their clothes off and Dean winds up with his arms tangled in his shirt, pinned to the cheap carpeting in front of the TV while Sam tongues a continuous line from his pulse over to one flat nipple to flick into his navel. His hips jerk and rise unconsciously against Sam’s weight. 

Sam slides back up his body to breathe across his skin, “How’s your bed?” 

“I think…it’s pretty good,” he says, and then leans up to suck Sam’s tongue into his mouth. They never make it there. Dean gets a hand inside Sam’s jeans and he rolls halfway off of him with a weak moan as Dean’s fingers close around his cock. It’s the first handjob he’s given, and it’s more unwieldy than he expected. Sam doesn’t seem to mind, silently lifting his hips so that Dean can tug his jeans and boxers down. He stares up at Dean under his lashes, tongue poking out between his teeth as Dean slowly strokes him. A flush that originates at Sam’s cheeks spreads down his neck and into his shirt collar. He breathes hard, eyelids fluttering, when Dean tightens his grip. Sam continues to watch him, lips parting on a silent moan. 

His shirt is already twisted up around his middle and Dean pushes it all the way up past his chest, nails carelessly skimming his skin. As he palms the head of Sam’s cock, the muscles in his abdomen jump and tighten. It’s fascinating. 

When Sam comes, he reaches up to grip Dean’s forearm, stilling his hand. The only warning Dean gets is the way his head drops back on his neck, presenting Dean with the long vulnerable column of Sam’s throat. He would like to spread Sam out on his bed and take hours to touch him everywhere, especially the divot in his throat and the knob at the top of his spine. He’s spent years reconstructing Sam in his head, he’d like to know how close he got it. 

When they get to Dean’s bedroom, Sam pushes him back on the bed and kneels down at the foot of it. He peels the last of Dean’s clothes off and leans forward to suck him into his mouth. What do you know, Dean’s got an officer sucking his dick. He’s filled about a thousand grunts’ fantasies without even trying. With Sam’s tongue twisting around the head of his dick and his hand speeding up and down Dean’s dick in smooth strokes, Dean realizes something. 

“You’ve done this before,” he says, voice choked up. 

Sam’s eyes crinkle at the corners like he would be smiling if his lips weren’t stretched tight around Dean’s dick. He gets his palms under Dean’s buttocks and forces Dean further back into his throat. It’s so good--he's clinging so hard to that fragile thread that's keeping him from coming too early. Sam sucks hard at the crown, bumping and sliding it along the soft flesh of his cheek, and wrenching a surprised shiver out of him. Dean curses and fists his hands tight into his cheap comforter, fingers digging in so hard they ache. It barely registers. There seems to be nothing left of him but his dick and the nerves that connect his brain to it. 

Sam gets Dean’s leg over his shoulder and tilts his hips further up so that he can play a finger over Dean’s hole. The touch fails to impress on him until Sam’s throat closes around his cock and then he’s scrambling to get his arms under him so that he can see what it looks like. He swallows at the ways Sam’s eyes slowly close like he’s savoring the experience of Dean’s dick in his throat. 

“Your fucking sweet-as-pie mouth,” Dean says incredulously. “Jesus, who are you?” 

Dean’s orgasm hits him almost too soon. Sam’s fingertip dips just inside him and the thought of what that means is too much. He shakes hard, dropping back to the mattress and losing himself for a minute in the post-orgasm Euphoria. When he opens his eyes again, Sam's just wiping his mouth off with the back of his hand. He runs reassuring hand up and down Dean’s thigh. 

Dean has to force his fingers to open on the sheets. When he lets go the rents left from his grip remain in the fabric. Sam laughs at him. 

“Your mind is completely blown, isn’t it?” 

“Shut the fuck up,” Dean says, but it’s soft and breathy and only serves to make Sam laugh. 

Sam runs a too hot shower and forces Dean into it. They kiss with shower water getting into their mouths. Sam’s soap slippery fingertips brush down over his back and between his cheeks to slide over the tense ring of muscle. Dean’s never really thought that far. He imagines what he’d look like spread out under Sam. It’s not hard to picture. He nips at Sam’s jaw and saves the thought for another day, enjoying the way his dick slides in the groove of Sam’s hip. 

Just before Dean comes a second time, Sam’s arms tighten around his waist and he says, “I need you to come back to Oceanside with me.” 

“Why?” Dean asks, voice cracking. 

“I just need you to, okay?” Sam whispers, dropping his face into the curve of Dean’s shoulder. He’s still careful of the unbandaged wound scarifying Dean’s arm. 

“Okay, Sam,” Dean replies. 

*

He doesn’t know why Sam insists they have to drive all the way out to his place in Oceanside. He’s got a roommate. He shares the bathroom. And it means they have to drive in Sam’s stupid economy car. When Dean tries to question him, Sam just fixes him with a look and says you’ll see. Dean would rather be fucking him with the remaining time he has on leave. Instead he finds himself trapped in a car unable to do anything. 

Dean knows that Sam lives on Canyon Drive, he’s still got a few tricks up his sleeve, but Sam ends up turning off the highway early. He drives to a storage facility and parks the car while Dean is still trying to figure out what's going on. As he pulls the keys out the ignition, he gives Dean a loaded look before getting out of the car. There's something important missing from this story. They walk together in silence to a unit way in the back. Sam sticks the key into the lock and rolls the door up with a crack. The light of the sun shines inside, illuminating the unit enough that he can see a car covered with a drop cloth. 

“No way,” Dean says, frozen at the entrance. Sam grins at him and steps inside to pull the drop cloth off. Dad’s Chevy is revealed as the cloth floats to the ground. Sam brushes a fond hand over the hood, lashes lowered like he’s remembering, and Dean finally steps inside. He repeats, “No way.” 

“Dad left it for you,” Sam says. “Before we went on that crazy road trip I came to tell you about it.” 

Dean can’t say anything. His heart is in his throat. He’s spent a ton of money restoring the Torino Cobra he stumbled upon with Bobby while working in the junkyard. He loves it like other people love their dogs, but this was the car Dean grew up imagining would be his. He can’t believe Dad thought of him. That it’s still intact. Dean doesn’t even know how much work must’ve gone into it. If he puts his hands to it he’s pretty sure he’ll be able to tell where his girl ends and her prostheses start. He brings a hand up to his face and realizes he’s crying. Sam presses the keys into his palm and then walks out of the unit into the sunshine, leaving him alone for a moment. 

After a while, Dean follows him back out again, keys stretching out his jean pocket. He finds Sam leaning up against another unit, feet crossed at the ankle. Sam peers down at the ground, expressionless and Dean can’t help pressing into his space and kissing him. Fuck whoever sees them just this one time. 

*

_In May of 2009, Captain Sam Winchester was redeployed to Afghanistan in support of the Helmand Province Campaign. He participated in Operation Khanjar in July. It was the largest offensive since Operation Phantom Fury in 2004. He is still there, quietly taking care of his men._

_The 1/7 is currently at home at Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. Dean had to explain to battalion command that his arm was savaged by a wild animal during his leave. They didn't exactly believe it._

_He and the 1/7 continue to participate in exercises and contingency deployments with the 1st Marine Division. He makes sure to Skype Sam as often as he can. It's not enough, but they take what they can get.._

_Only one officer dares to accuse Sam of being overly-familiar with enlisted personnel without realizing S.Sgt Winchester is his brother. This person's shoulder socket troubles him for the next two weeks. Nobody will say exactly what Captain Winchester did._

_While he waits for Sam to come home, Dean seriously considers mustering out for the first time._

_1st Battalion, 5th Marines loading into helicopters at Camp Leatherneck, preparing to be dropped off in the Nawa-l-Barakzayi district on July 2nd._

*


End file.
